Transit Umbra
by oldstaletale
Summary: a quarrel, a parting, and the ride back to the village
1. Interim at Dusk

**Transit Umbra**

 _(or an account of the darkest hour)_

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 **Disclaimer** : This story is a rewrite of some parts of Episode 10, with fanon in-between/extended scenes. As such, some of the dialogue were taken directly from the canon. I claim no ownership for them, or for any of the characters I use in my fic. XoXo

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I. Interim at Dusk

His soul wanted nothing more than to sink into a pit of wrath and despair. It would have been the easiest thing in the world, but for the girl who wouldn't let him, damn her. Damn her masters, too, and their inane talk about kings and prophecies. He could still hear the sickening crunch of arrows sinking into leather and cloth and soft flesh. He himself had learned archery secretly - the way he had learned everything he knew, at the insistence of his father - back when he was a boy, and arrows hit wooden targets with a solid hearty sound that made him proud.

His father...no, it couldn't be...

his _Kiha_ , who held his heart in her hands...

a whirling, steely-eyed lieutenant who would not enter the tomb where dead kings gather and refused to be his hostage, eyes glinting at the prospect of a challenge...Gak Dan, so steadfast in her duties, courteous to the last, who promised to protect the king as she would her own father... _He told me to deliver these words to you...Be the Joo Shin King..._

the feel of bodies falling against him, one on top of the other...Sueh Duruh, whose nickname was the Walking Boar... _If he dies, he'll die standing up,_ said a breathless voice beside him several lifetimes ago —

He swiveled round and faced her.

"I told you," he said. "What?" she shot back, eyebrows raised in feigned innocence; yet with mouth firmly set in that line which meant she was about to be incredibly stubborn.

He could feel a vein in his temple throbbing with annoyance. "I said I will have nothing to do with your people."

"Oh, that. You know, I was just thinking about that myself." He had to hand it to the girl. With all that was happening, she still had the audacity to be cheeky. "Why am I following someone who doesn't want to be followed? I don't know how I feel about this myself...but I think I know why you don't want me following you. I know why you don't want our attention."

Damn her.

He stalked off. He wished to heaven she would stop following him around when he didn't even know where his feet would take him. How dare she know things about him; what right had she to walk with perfect synchrony to his steps as if she had been doing it all her life? A week ago he didn't even know she existed.

"You're afraid that my masters and I will be killed like the Julno men."

As dead a shot with words as she was with a bow and arrow.

She was hit on the shoulder, DamDuk recalled. She had been the first of the bodies to fall on him. He remembered her Master's ashen face upon seeing her on the ground; his curious relief as he checked her wound, though DamDuk didn't think there was anything to be relieved about at the spray of blood that spurted when he drew out the arrowhead from her flesh. She had whined when her Master tied her bandages in a tight knot. Hyungo slapped her arm and told her to hush. _It wouldn't hurt at all, you stubborn girl,_ he admonished her, _if you listened to your master now and then and stayed behind like I told you to._

"Would you stop following me if I break your legs?" Worrying about her was the last thing he wanted. He needed to sort through the tumult of emotions inside his chest: grief, guilt, resentment...and an overwhelming longing for Kiha. His world, which tilted out of its axis when Gak Dan told him his father was dead by Kiha's hand, would surely be put to right once he sees her. How could she be guilty? It had to be some lie, some grotesque misunderstanding. He needed only to look at her so he could be certain of it, so he could expunge the doubts they had sown inside of him. He wanted to hold her as he had done, that night in the Village of the Destitute. He wanted to drown in the deep pools of those haunting sad eyes that seemed to have seen so much, to ease all their secret hurts and heartaches. _Don't suffer because of me,_ he had told her. What fresh pain was she suffering from right now because of this, because of him?

But the idea that his father was truly dead, that he had died hounded by enemies without his son to protect him, was growing harder and harder to refute, and DamDuk could not see how even seeing Kiha would somehow bring him back to life. He felt like someone was slowly pushing a broadsword through his own heart. A good son would seek justice for his father. He remembered Lady Yon and thought for the first time he understood Ho Gae's all-consuming rage. He would lay waste to the whole of Gooknae castle if he could, but what was he to do if he finds out he himself had caused his death, as the rumors were saying? In his heart of hearts he already believed it to be true.

"Where will you go first," asked the girl Sujini, unrelenting as ever. "I heard the King's body is in the temple. Will you go there or...do you want to go and see that woman first?" How easily she could match stride for stride both the pace of his feet and his thoughts. Was he really so transparent? She had so casually waded through the chaos in his mind and shone a torch to expose the conflict raging there. In his current state, it made him feel naked and vulnerable.

In the end it was she who made his choice for him by offering to find Kiha herself.

"I heard that woman is at the Yon residence. I'll go and fetch her but...do you think I'll be safe from her? My masters all say she's an assassin sent by the Hwachun."

There was no malice to her. Her concern was reasonable, DamDuk knew, yet his anger still flared. He resented it even more for echoing the very doubts he was trying so hard not to acknowledge. ( _Wisdom makes us fear_ , said a different girl, in a different time. _The wise man catch the panther with a trap_.)

"The only person I don't trust right now are you and your so-called masters," he snapped. The words were as much for her as they were for his treacherous heart. "That woman? I've known and trusted Kiha since I was eleven years old."

 _I've known you for a week,_ he thought. _What right have you to know of my heart?_

He left her there and made his way to the oracle's temple, resolutely not guilty about the wounded look his words had put on her face.


	2. Midnight, and A Parenthetical

II. Midnight, and A Parenthetical

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When next they meet, it was nighttime — a particularly dark night to suit DamDuk's grim mood. Heavy rain clouds marred the sky, hiding the stars so that it was hard to see away from the light of the torches. The girl was waiting for him in the stables where they had sheltered during their flight from his Hwachun pursuers.

"I gave her your message," she said by way of greeting. "I told her to come meet you in this place. She'll be here, if all goes well."

DamDuk responded with a curt nod. It was all he could manage. He didn't think anything could make him feel worse than he was feeling earlier, but the visit to the temple did just that. There was a maelstrom of despair where his insides should be. Seeing his father's tomb deprived him of all hope that his death was merely a lie; that he was after all alive and well somewhere, waiting for his errant son to come home and ask forgiveness for failing so dismally in his duties.

But it was the surviving guard's words that had put such turmoil in his being. She was the second person now that swore to Kiha's guilt, and even the Oracle was convinced. Was there a greater sort or torment existing than what was inflicted upon him then, listening to the accusation against the woman he loved while standing in front of his father's body?

His yearning to see and talk to Kiha now bordered on desperation.

It occurred to him that he just might do so in a while, all because of this girl. "She thanked me," said Sujini, leaning on the wooden fence and picking at a blade of grass. "I didn't think she would, but she did. That woman, your...friend..." His last words to her before they parted hung in the air as heavily as the clouds overhead. "I think maybe I was mistaken about her."

She sounded as if she was trying to make amends. It surprised DamDuk and made him more than a little uncomfortable, when he knew full well it was he who had acted unreasonably in that moment.

Warily, he asked her the question that was baffling him for some time now.

"Why do you keep helping me?"

For half a curious heartbeat, the look she threw at him in reply reminded him so much of Kiha when he had begged her to save his father — a look of pure and tender understanding, that seemed to say: _I see you. I see your heart. I see your hurts._ _How am I to deny you when_ _I see how alone you are in the world?..._

 _..._ but then she averted her gaze and the moment broke, and suddenly she was holding up three of her fingers.

"This service would only cost your Highness three coins." She grinned.

Ah, but she was hopeless.

 _-Unraveling-_

The rest of the time they spent waiting in silence and tense anticipation. DamDuk dealt with his growing dread by keeping to himself in a corner and brooding. She was the one who could not keep still — pacing back and forth; checking the horses; occasionally scanning the distance for signs of a lone woman on horseback.

She was on her third tour round the stables when they heard it; felt the faint tremor on the ground that could only be the sound of approaching hoofbeats. Kiha, he thought. Let it finally be Kiha. If he had allowed himself to feel the smallest flicker of hope in that instant, it was unceremoniously extinguished by the arrow that came whizzing past his head a second later, missing him by a hairsbreadth.

They emerged from out of the darkness, faceless and familiar, clad head to toe in deepest crimson; and came charging towards the stables from all sides, surrounding them in no time at all. Quick as a fox, the girl sprung into action and loosed one of her own arrows at the enemy before he could even get to his sword.

There was no time to ponder what their presence in that place implied. His hand found the hilt of Jumong's greatsword and he lost himself to the fight. Instinct and muscle memory took over, skills he had honed through many a clandestine training in the dead of night. He blocked an oncoming blade, struck at the hand holding it, then whirled around to take on another without so much as a pause for breath.

Somewhere in his past a boy asks the mysterious girl he had met behind the bookcases, _If I fight well, will I be a good person?_

The sword was heavy in his hand, but sharp, and the feel of it finding its target, cleaving flesh and bone, gave him sick satisfaction. _He told me to give you this..._ _The wise man catches the panther..._ _When we arrived she had thrust the sword into his heart._

At long last he had someone to unloose his seething rage upon. The stream of red assassins did not abate. There seemed no end to them and even as he cut down three, more were coming in the distance; red as a trickle of blood; deep dark red as smouldering coal, as ember. He looked up and there she was; the woman he so longed for. Kiha. Priestess. Guardian. Clothed in a gown as dark a red as those worn by the Hwachun men trying to kill them. Looking, as ever, hauntingly, treacherously beautiful.

 _Tell me, do you truly serve another?_

He could taste her betrayal in his mouth, yet still he cut a bloody swath across the bodies rushing towards him in a doomed attempt to get to her. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The brewing storm finally broke and drenched their bleak tableau in cold, stinging raindrops, turning dark red figures into inky shadows. One of them came near Kiha and seemed to be holding her - or holding her back. DamDuk no longer had the strength to tell which.

Ah, but wouldn't it be so simple, so sweetly uncomplicated, if she was merely the helpless maiden in the clutches of something evil, holding her against her will? And he, DamDuk, the gallant warrior come to her rescue. Wouldn't it be so easy; if only there wasn't a line of corpses trailing on the wake of that narrative, and one of them his own father.

He could barely see her face yet it seemed to him she was imploring him desperately...but for what he could not tell. He had thought he would be assured of her innocence with one look from her; but in that unlit place with a host of assassins all around him, it was hopeless, hopeless... Still, he would have rend the ground in two to be by her side if she would only call out his name, deny what he himself was now silently accusing her.

 _Call out to me, Kiha. Friend. Beloved. Dearest companion. I begged you once never to leave my side._ _Come back where I can see you._ _Tell me to come save you now and I will._

There were shouts and grunts all around him, but from her he heard nothing but silence.

Then came the sound he had learned to dread the most — arrowhead ripping through leather, cloth, skin; burying itself into soft flesh.

Thunk! and a yelp of pain.

The girl had been chased into the bridge, still fighting furiously, fending off the Hwachun men with both bow and blade. She had more of them pursuing her and they were hard on her heels, for her arrows were quicker and more injurious than his sword, dispatching several of the men in a shorter span of time. The way to eliminate a skilled archer was to charge at her in great numbers and faster than she could nock arrows on her bowstring.

He had taunted her about her fearlessness once. True to form, she kept fighting even after being hit. She took down the three who had followed her, slashing at one with a harsh cry, plunging her sword into the chest of the next...but then her knees buckled and there were yet more of them coming; and so DamDuk made his choice.

Though it felt like cutting off one of his limbs.

Though it felt like a kind of death.

Rain poured down from the sky as if in commiseration, and Sujini swung her sword in a last desperate effort to fight back before falling to the ground, writhing in pain. He rushed to her side to keep the Hwachun from descending on her. Jumong's greatsword drank deep of the men's blood as he cut down each and every one of them that came near.

Friendless... Orphaned... A branded traitor... Who was he now, without the last and only person in his life who truly knew him; who had loved him, regardless of his status and in spite of it? _Kiha_ , who was his light. All morrows would be as dark as this night for him from now on.

He half-lead, half-carried the girl to one of the horses and helped her mount. In that short walk, her breathing turned ragged, and she groaned when he climbed up behind her on the saddle. He felt something was worryingly off with her wound. He had to get her to her masters at once, and her village was still a long ride away. DamDuk set out at a gallop and did not look back.

On the field where he left her, one bereft Guardian sobbed at the immensity of her loss; but in a few moments soon the sky will stop raining, and heaven would no longer cry for her.


	3. Prelude to Dawn

III. Prelude to Dawn

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"Twice!" he growled, all of a sudden. They had been riding without pause for nigh on two hours. During that time, the girl had steadily worsened. He prayed the heavens their horse would not tire or stumble as he urged it ever onwards, in as fast a pace as he thought the animal could manage.

DamDuk thought his heart had turned into hollow stone, but there it was now; beating so loud and fast he thought it might burst out of his chest; furiously alive with fear.

He had tended to her wound as soon as he felt he had put enough distance between them and any possible pursuers. He feared she would lose too much blood if he tried to draw out the quarrel from her flesh, so he decided to leave it; broke enough of the shaft to keep it from getting too jostled while they're riding; and bound her as tightly as he could with a strip of torn cloth. The girl managed to endure his clumsy ministrations without screaming by biting on the leather strap of her quiver, so hard she almost tore it in two.

"Would you be alright?" he asked, helping her stand. She had to prop herself up against the trunk of the tree where they had dismounted so she could keep upright.

"I will be, soon as we get to my masters." DamDuk tried not to worry at the feebleness of her voice.

He thought all he had to do was make sure she didn't bleed out, but when they were riding once more, she slipped to the side of the saddle and would have fallen if he hadn't caught her in time.

He shook her awake. "Oy," he said. "Wake up." She leaned exhaustedly against his arm, groaning, and he felt the heat of the fever burning off of her body.

He would not let her sleep after that. He put one arm around her and clutched her to his chest to keep her from falling again. "Oy!" he would hiss at her ear, every few minutes. _Have you died? Have you left me as well?_

Amidst the sound of thundering hoofbeats, he listened for her faint reply.

"...Hngh." Barely a sigh; the smallest of sounds between laboured breaths, each one fainter than the one before. _I haven't yet. Not yet._

Thus went their morbid colloquy. Thus, they rode into the night, splashing on unseen puddles left by the rain that had passed. He was beginning to feel his own exhaustion, but he permitted himself no respite from their grueling pace. The thought of her going to sleep right there in his arms and never waking again kept him going like no rest would. He told himself they were nearer to the village. Surely, they were nearer.

"Twice," DamDuk said through clenched teeth, when her answer would not come and he had to shake her awake again. There was a strange constriction in his throat that made his voice come out hoarse and unsteady. "Twice you've been wounded while helping me. Will you learn to stop involving yourself in my business only when you're dead, you fool-of-a-girl?"

No — just a simple peasant girl, in truth; a street urchin overly fond of wine, who claims she does everything for money, but bristled at the idea that a prince would choose not to uphold justice. Was there ever a time in their too-brief acquaintance when she wasn't helping him, wasn't rushing to his rescue? He who had landed her in prison...dragged her into the appalling political mess that was his life...turned her into a fugitive and exposed her to all sorts of danger.

Fool, he calls her, for following him still when he had brought her nothing but misfortune; but the truth of it was, not his father, with his unbending devotion to the land he ruled, nor Kiha, who once vowed to defy Heaven just to be with him, nor anyone had ever made him feel as less alone as this girl invariably does — as the exhilaration of seeing her charging towards him on horseback to fend off whoever was running after him, whether they be opposing team members, deadly assassins, or Yon Ho Gae.

"What did you even hope to gain?" He doubted she was even aware of him anymore. Likely the fever had taken her beyond the reach of his voice and all his efforts to rouse her was now futile.

"Do you see now? This is the only kind of gratitude you'll get for helping someone like me."

He could only ever replace kindness and leal service by turning his back on the very people who offered them. The handful of people who had stood by him all ended up getting hurt or dying. Ho Gae...his father...Gak Dan...the Julno men... And now her.

She mumbled something in reply.

Startled, DamDuk cradled the back of her head and turned her face towards him. Her forehead was burning and damp with sweat; her eyes glazed and unfocused. She was gasping for breath but in the darkness he saw the shade of a tremulous grin on her lips.

"What?" he asked.

"This...'ll be five coins. One extra for...the late...hour."

 _Five coins._ Out of all of them, she had the least cause to support him. Out of all of them, she had been the most stubbornly steadfast.

Five measly coins. The thought that it must be the fever making her speak thus did not ease his conscience in the slightest. She could be asking for half the kingdom and no man would find it unwarranted. At the very least she should demand for his gratitude and he...he would...but instead...

Five goddamned coins.

 _You could have sold me to my enemies and asked for a thousand times that sum._ He couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry and ended up sounding angry. "If that's how little you value your life, I ought to drop you off this horse right now!"

"Ah-ha...your highness," she said, tongue slurring the words, "where's your...sense of loyalty?"

Later (for there _will_ be a later, for her and for him), much later, when he is assured she is out of danger and his heartbeat finally slows down to its normal pace, he would try to make sense of garbled words said in delirium, hoping to dull the inexplicable thrill they had brought him, which, he being himself, he felt he did not deserve. Later, he would ask her (without really asking her): _Are you loyal to me because you think of me as your king?_

It is doubtful if she can even remember what led him to ask her this. She, being herself, would sidestep the question by dispensing sage counsel, all the more astonishing for the kindness that lies beneath its pragmatism. She answers him (without really answering him): _No, that's not why. That's not why at all._

Presently though, the girl lapsed into fitful unconsiousness; but he had her, and he held her, and did not let her fall.

In the distance ahead of them, streaks of golden light began to appear in the horizon, and DamDuk gazed wonderingly at the sudden and surprising sunrise.

- _fin-_


End file.
